Fresh Expressions Conference

Reading the press release from the recent Fresh Expressions Conference in Durham was refreshing.

I am aware that there is a certain cynicism out there about about Fresh Expressions in terms of people calling just about anything (eg. a new church notice board) a ‘fresh expression’. However, the report on James Dunn’s input sounds interesting, though it’s a pity that the press release didn’t give us more of the content on Graham Tomlin’s input addressing the question, “Can Fresh Expressions change culture.”

Professor Dunn noted that Jesus was a Jew, his disciples were all Jewish and that “Christianity began as a movement within Judaism.” He then suggested that the Jesus movement within Judaism could be interpreted as a fresh expression of Israel’s traditional religion. His emphasis was that “The character of Christianity as a fresh expression is enshrined in our sacred texts. These are the texts which define Christianity more clearly and definitively than any other writings.”

Anyone else think that this might be a frutful way of thinking about fresh expressions?

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12 Responses to “Fresh Expressions Conference”

Amen. I’m glad to read that “Christianity began as a movement within Judaism.”, yep that’s right. I think we have lost our Hebraic roots within the church and that desperatly needs to be recovered. One book that speaks to this is “Our Farther Abraham, Jewish roots of the Christian faith” by Dr Marvin Wilson.
Dr Wilson teaches biblical and theological atudies at Gordon Cornwell sem. This book is well worth the read.

While clearly many early Christians were Jewish converts, many (the Gentiles) were not.

I think we need to be very careful that we do not see Christianity as an extension of Judaism and continue to identify it as such, especially in a way that excludes Gentiles from being equal before God, through an acceptance of Christ.

The whole of the New Testament Gospel message is very different from the message of the Old Testament; it is a Gospel message for everyone about that saving power of Christ.

Most Christians in the world now have never had any connection whatsoever to Judaism, either by birth or by faith.

I would suggest that an over-identification between the two may be in part responsible for the Christian Zionism that is so prevalent, especially among evangelicals and even more so in the USA; something which has not helped the present situation in Israel and the Occupied Territories where much to my sadness and that of many others, Zionist Christians world-wide seemingly ally themselves more with the Jews than with their Christian brothers and sisters.

Let us not forget that the guardians of Christianity in the Holy Land have come from the Palestinian community since the time of Christ, who maintained that faith even after the onslaught of Islam. It is they who are now being forced to leave their traditional homelands, the Christian component of the Palestinian community there now having fallen to less than 1%, while universally across the Palestinian diaspora it is between 10 and 12%, as it has been in the Holy Land in the past.

Even in Bethlehem, Beit Jala and Beit Sahour, the number of Christians, where previously they have been in the majority, has fallen to a point where that is arguably no longer the case.

I’ve been thinking a lot about ‘Fresh Expressions’, particularly because I’ve been working on a module for my Cert. Theo. on Mission and Culture.

I think, that culturally, what was relevant in the past in the way we did church isn’t relevant to current culture, mainly because of the way people are now educated.

For hundreds of years, only the ‘gentry’ were educated, and the rest of the people remained more or less uneducated, and were often the servants and tenants of those gentry’s family.

We were taught, up until about 20 years ago, mainly by someone standing in front of rows of youngsters hastily scribbling notes from what the teacher talked about, learning by rote. However, in England, at least, teaching methods have changed to more group work, hands-on and discussion. This is, I think from my experinces working with younger people and children over the years, why younger people (under 40) relate better to lively atmosphere, and a chance to discuss and carry out Christianity in practice.

Thinking about it, this is similar to the way Jesus carried out His ministry in the Jewish culture.

Surely, if we can try to adapt to mission in the culture of other countries, shouldn’t we also adapt to the changing cultural shifts in our own? Just a thought!

Drawing together your comment, Bishop, that Christianity was a fresh expression of Israel’s traditional religion, and Edward Ingle’s observation that the Church was very soon dominated by gentile followers of Christ, seems to point to an answer to Graham Tomlin’s question ‘Can Fresh Expressions change culture?’ in the negative.

Or at least, not in ways that are easily foreseen. The Spirit blows where it wills.

To stretch the analogy to breaking point, Jesus’ fresh expression of Judaism was indeed stunningly successful to those outside of Israel – much as contemporary fresh expressions try to be to those outside of existing churches – but at the cost of becoming something which the host culture could no longer accept as legitimate, leading ultimately to rupture and two parallel covenants (or ‘integrities’, as one might say today).

I am becoming interested in the missional church stuff following Frost and Hirsch ‘The Shaping of Things to Come’
The view is that renewing the western church actually is now diverting energy from becoming missionaries again in cutlures like Australia and Britain, where the church is largely irrelevant. Lesslie Newbigin recognised this 50 years ago and is Foolishness to the Greeks after he arrived back from 40+ years in India was seminal
David Jones, Australia